“I am among those who have a huge regard for our Prime Minister. I knew Giorgia Meloni because I was in Parliament with her. I must tell you that she surprised me even more when she began to govern, because she is even better than I thought she was. She has determination, rigor, the desire to change the country, an extraordinary intellectual honesty.”
He said it Roberto Occhiuto, President of the Calabria Region and vice national secretary of Forza Italia, speaking at the Forza Italia Giovani party, underway in Bellaria (Rimini).
“But we are his team and we have to put ourselves forward to be the best players on the centre-right team because Berlusconi and Forza Italia were the founders of the coalition, but they were also the ones who provided the content.
We have to be like those players who want to make the team grow, want to make it win and shake it up when there is a need to shake it up, such as on the issue of civil rights, on the issue of citizenship.
President Berlusconi is still present in the collective memory of the country today because he was an extraordinary man, but also because he planted flags in national politics that Italian citizens, voters, still have in mind. Berlusconi is the one who abolished the property tax, the inheritance tax, increased pensions.
We need to be in the government team those who give the flags. For example, we cannot give away to the center-left an important part of the electorate and also of Italian society such as the Catholic world that looks with interest at Forza Italia. We must not have complexes, shyness, because the others do not have them”.